With the development of the 3rd Generation (3G) mobile communication and the development of the smart phone, mobile internet is applied more and more widely. In such an environment, Apple started providing the iPhone application through an application providing system (called a mobile application store) in 2008 and gained nearly one billion downloads in a short period of time.
The using of the mobile application store makes a large number of independent developers of application. Operators, handset makers and Internet providers also try to develop their respective online application stores, or have already introduced their own online application stores.
In a common application store system, the main function entities are the application network store and the developer community. Of course, the two function entities can be integrated. As shown in FIG. 1, the common application store does not have a function of interfacing with telecommunication capability, so the application developed by developers cannot use telecommunication capability.
Main function modules of related application network store include a portal, an authentication module, an application distribution module, a supply & sales module, a service support module and an operation support module. The portal mainly provides access points of WEB portal, WAP portal, mobile client or PC client. Through the access points, mobile phone users can search for and download application conveniently. The authentication module provides the function of authentication of user and authentication of application. The application distribution module provides functions of various application distribution paths, such as, downloading to computer, WAP PUSH to mobile phone, sending address through short message or directly downloading and installing by client, and other functions related to application. The supply & sales module provides management of application selling in the application store, including the management of store and shelf, the management of online and offline of application and the management of recommendation ranking.
Main functions of related developer community include: application upload, application management function, forum function and developer wiki.
It can be seen that the current system only supports common application and cannot support execution of a service with telecommunication capability. Thus, the application executing the service also cannot realize access of telecommunication capability. This certainly will drop the status of the operator to ‘channel’, thereby severely impacting the interest of the operator and the viability of the operator in the future.